Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

We had family friends visiting us yesterday and both of their daughters like baking--well one really likes baking, the other likes baking but prefers eating the baked goods. I decided that I didn't really want to use my mixer or generally do anything too elaborate or messy (I guessed that clean up wouldn't be the girls' idea of fun and I didn't want to have a hard clean up on my own.) I've made brownies with them before so, while everyone likes brownies, I thought something new would be more fun. I decided on chocolate chip cookies from Nigella Kitchen. They used melted butter instead of creamed butter so they are quicker to make and have an easier clean up.

Christmas Day

I love Christmas in London! The city is beautiful, everyone seems to celebrate (even Jews like me!), and I have a delicious lunch with my family in Clapham. Jeff is an excellent cook and he made turkey, veg, roasted potatoes, bread sauce, and chestnut stuffing. Yum!

Chocolate Peppermint Cookies

I had left over cookie dough from the chocolate wafer cookie crust I made for my Mississippi mud pie, so I sliced it to bake off. But plain, crisp, chocolate cookies, while very nice, don't thrill me on their own. So I asked myself, "self, what could kick these up a notch?" (I love Emeril!) Since it's the holiday season I figured peppermint would do the trick. I happen to have a jar peppermint "snow" (basically crushed candy canes but with out and of the resulting powder or giant chunks), which I mixed with some plain and some red sanding sugars, to make a topping for the cookies. I make the mixture since the peppermint snow would melt a bit during the cooking process but the sanding sugars would stay nice and sparkly.

Oatmeal, White Chocolate, Cranberry Bars

These are adapted from a blondie recipe in Nigella Kitchen. I disagree with terming these (even before my adaptations) blondies. They really don't resemble a blondie in ingredients or final product. But that's okay because they are excellent anyway! I think, if you did them with raisins they'd be the perfect oatmeal cookie bar. But who wants raisins when you can have dried cranberries and white chocolate? They were delicious and the texture was excellent---chewy, think oatmeal raisin cookie chewy, but still a bit caky. Yum.

By the way, I chose cranberries and white chocolate because they seem like good holiday flavors and I was bringing these bars into class just before winter break. They weren't as big of a hit as the peppermint brownies (but what could be?), but they were certainly very well received!

Peppermint Brownies

Remember the Baked brownies? These are them, but with about two tablespoons of peppermint extract added to the batter. They were just like the usual Baked brownies--fudgy, rich, dense, chocolaty, and delicious--but with a rich yet subtle minty undertone.

Thanksgivukkah

As I'm sure you heard, Thanksgiving and Hanukkah overlapped this year (on the 28th of November), a rare occurrence that (apparently) complicated things for American Jews who had to have celebrations two nights in a row. Since I'm currently studying in the UK, I had class on Thursday until 6:00pm, so no chance of a proper Thanksgiving regardless of the timing of Hanukkah. So we combined both celebrations and pushed them until Saturday so that our British family (who had to work Friday) could come over, enjoy the day, celebrate Hanukkah and, of course, eat lots of turkey.

TARDIS Cake and Jammie Dodgers

Hi everyone. I'm Mercedes and I'm a nerd. I love Doctor Who (as you may have noticed when I dressed my yorkie up as the Doctor for Halloween). As you can imagine, I was very excited about the 50th anniversary episode of Doctor Who that aired last weekend. In celebration of the landmark episode I made my dog dress up again--she was not happy--and I baked quite a bit.

I've Redecorated

I've changed the desktop and I hope you like it (and get the rather obscure reference to Doctor Who).

While doing my readings for my political communications class this week, I found out that Blogger was the first blog site. Today in class my professor mentioned that fact and said that he was sure all us young, tech-savvy students would no doubt be using wordpress or the like. Nope, I still use blogger. And I don't plan on changing. It's simple, it's easy to use, and a blog is a blog is a blog, so why would I go through the hassle of switching platforms... (Anyway I'm definitely above the average age of the students in that classroom and, while I pretend to be, I'm not all that tech-savvy.)

Fresh Currant Scones, take 2

After my success with my fresh currant scone recipe I decided to try a new scone recipe that calls for fresh fruit. It is one of the few recipes from the FCI's pastry cookbook that we didn't learn in class, so I've been wanting to try it out. I used fresh currants in them although the recipe doesn't specifically call for them.

My Favorite Holiday

I love Halloween! It's my favorite holiday. You get to dress up in silly costumes and eat sweets without feeling stupid or guilty (respectively). Because Halloween fell mid-week, I got to celebrate it twice! Once with my friend Katy and her flatmates--it was a Halloween party crossed with a birthday party for Katy's flatmate Lucy. The invitation said come in fancy dress (that's British for come in costume) or come dressed as Lucy. So I decided to try out a costume I've been wanted to do for a few years: Lucille Ball. I found a close to perfect Lucy dress at a charity shop near me. The pearls and pumps were mine already. The real effort was getting my wavy red hair curly and pinned up (I think I used over 30 bobby pins!) The party was good fun even if I don't think any of the Brits there knew "I Love Lucy."

Baked Brownies

I know I've made these before, and I'm sure I've posted about them (or variations thereof). But they never fail to be pretty much perfect in every way. In fact, these are probably my favorite basic brownie--I know I've said at before about other brownies and I may well say it about another recipe some day, but I think these are the best. They are fudgy and richly chocolatey. They are really easy to bake and the recipe makes a 9x13 inch pan---rather than a 9x9 pan---and more brownies is always better! I made these with a friend for our mothers and they were a hit! I actually spaced, we were chatting while baking, and added the eggs before the sugars. I was a bit worried it'd make the brownies cakier, but it didn't...just one more reason to like the recipe; it's resilient!

Plated Dessert for the Jewish Holidays

I made this dessert (honey milk chocolate semifreddo on apple almond cake with caramel apple sauce, milk chocolate almond bark, marzipan and nougatine) for the Yom Kippur break-fast meal this year. Yom Kippur was in mid-September, but I guess with all the excitement of starting school, I forgot to post this.

The beautiful thing about this dessert is it could be for almost any Jewish holiday! I had been away from home for Rosh Hashanna so I decided to use the traditional flavors from that holiday--apple and honey--as inspiration for my dessert. Since some of my cousins can't eat gluten- the whole dessert is gluten free and is therefore suitable for Passover (obviously if you keep Kosher there are other considerations besides leavened goods and flour, but in my household that's pretty much the extent of Passover.)

Thomas Keller's Chocolate Chip Cookies

Well I've officially started grad school classes. As a congratulatory gesture, my mom bought me a cookbook I've been wanting for a while: Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery Cookbook. It's a gorgeous cookbook! It's big an glossy and has tons of photos (of both the finished products and the process). The blurbs before the recipes seem to be both interesting and informative, and are all well written. The one problem is, most of the recipes are labor intensive or at least time consuming--it is a cookbook for a patisserie after all. Not that that is a problem in and of itself, but as I mentioned, I'm a grad student now; I don't have a ton of free time. So I couldn't make a sourdough loaf or lime and coconut eclairs. (I can't wait to try both another time).

Chocolate Cake with Pumpkin Spice Latte Filling

I start grad school this week. Yikes! I'm excited, don't get me wrong. But it's been a while since I've been a student and even longer since I've been in college. I know it's going to be a good experience and I'm going to learn a ton, but right now I just feel incredibly stressed.

Happily my friend Katy (who's getting a very science-y PhD) and her family invited me and my mom to their lovely house in St. Albans for lunch today. Her father is an excellent cook and a delicious meal with friends is the best distraction from the imminent doom--I mean exciting opportunity--of starting classes tomorrow.

White Chocolate, Pumpkin, Sage, and Brown Butter Mini Muffins

The pumpkin, sage, brown butter loaf cake recipe was supposed to make 8 mini loaves. Unfortunately my mini loaf pan only makes 6 loaves. What's a girl to do with left over loaf cake batter? Make mini muffins of course!

Since I had 6 mini loaves I figured I'd have a little fun with the mini muffins and add some chocolate. Pumpkin is delicious with dark chocolate but because this batter bordered on savory (with the brown butter and sage) I thought dark chocolate--even semi-sweet--might be a bit too bitter. So I tossed in a generous helping of good quality, white chocolate chips.

Pumpkin, Sage, Brown Butter Loaf Cakes

As I mentioned, I have a new eCookbook. Since the orange yogurt cake and fig olive oil cake both came out so well I decided to try another recipe. Pumpkin, sage, brown butter loaf cakes seemed sufficiently autumnal for the end of September and I love any recipe that has "butter" right in the name.

There is something very dignified about these cakes that I can't put my finger on. Perhaps it's the sophisticated flavor profile or maybe it's how perfectly these miniature loaves came out. It could possibly be the lack of glaze. I'm not sure. But whatever it was it made me feel as though these cakes (possibly sliced nicely) would be fit for a proper, English afternoon tea at a fancy hotel--you know, like the ones in the US that do traditional afternoon tea but with a distinctively American take on sweets.

Olive Oil Fig Cake

I love olive oil cakes. Besides the fact that I can fool myself into thinking they are healthy because olive oil, rather than butter, is the main fat in the cake, I also really enjoy the taste. I've been considering making one of the olive oil cakes from school for a while, but just hadn't gotten around to it. Then I saw this recipe in my new Martha Stewart Cakes cookbook and I just had to make it.

Orange Yogurt Cake

I'm trying something new here; I'm going to try to make this blog ever so slightly more like a normal blog where I discuss more than just food. Not that it won't remain food focused. Every post will still start and end with whatever I've baked and many will, I'm sure, never vier from my tied and true formula of discussing the recipe I've used or developed. But in at least a smattering of posts I will talk about me and what happens to be going on in my life.

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Cookie Sandwiches

I made these for Sophie and her family. The cookies are the chocolate cream cheese snacking cookies from Baked's latest cookbook. I've made them before and had wonderful feed back. The main thing about these cookies is that people who say they don't like sweets or really chocolatey things like them and people (like me) who would live on chocolate if they could like them. I figured that'd be good since Sophie's parents aren't as into sweets but her sister is and Sophie herself falls somewhere in between.

Almost Healthy Pantry Apple Crumble ~ With Recipe

The last weekend I was with my friend Sophie we went to her place upstate. It was lovely and we picked up some beautiful peaches and apples at a local farm stand. I picked up some oatmeal at the store and planned to make a peach crumble, but it turns out all the peaches had been eaten...oops! So I decided on apple crumble instead.

Blueberry Muffins with White Chocolate Chunks

Remember the plum muffins I made a while ago? All the fruity muffins I've made since haven't managed to live up to those. They were pretty much the perfect muffin. But I love plums (and strawberries, a variation I made) and I don't like blueberries. Sophie loves blueberries and had some left from a batch that were so gorgeous I enjoyed them when they were baked in pancakes, so I figured I'd use them up before they went bad. Of course buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup are good enough to make up for blueberries--would the muffins be enough? My answer is an emphatic yes!

Fresh Red Currant Scones (with recipe)

Sophie loves red currants. Apparently when she was young there was a giant currant bush near her house and she used to nosh on them until her tongue went numb from the tartness. So when her mom found gorgeous fresh currants at a famers market she got them for Sophie. Unfortunately, Sophie's tolerance for tart isn't what it was and she couldn't eat them raw.

What to do with fresh berries? Muffins or scones. She had some blueberries that were going to turn and I wanted to make them into muffins, so I figured currant scones. I based my recipe off the strawberry and chocolate scone recipe from Alice's Tea Cup, but with the fresh currants instead of strawberries (obviously) and no chocolate. They were excellent! The sweet(ish) scone dough contrasted nicely with the tart currants (which were not overly tart since they were slightly over ripe and slightly baked from the oven).

White Chocolate, Blackberry and Lime Eton Mess

As I understand it, Eton mess was first served at Eton and was a messy dessert of strawberries (or bananas) and cream (or possibly ice cream). Later they started adding meringue to the dessert and thus the dessert we know today--meringue, strawberries, and lightly whipped cream--was born.

I love traditional Eton mess with strawberries, but I decided that after our dinner of onion tart and filet mignon I couldn't just serve plain old strawberries and cream. I decided to substitute blackberries for the strawberries. That's not really much of a change so I figured I'd add some white chocolate (it's so good with blackberries) to the whipped cream. But white chocolate crème d'or, no matter how delicious, mixed with blackberries is no longer Eton mess. So I whipped up some cream with a bit of lime juice and zest (both pretty and delicious) and folded the meringue pieces into that.

Savory Onion Tart, the remake

Remember this? I first made this in culinary school and loved it so much I made it at home a couple times. One of those times happened to be for Sophie. That may have been a mistake. Ever since, she's been asking (nagging...begging...) me to make it again. If you don't remember it, basically it's a flakey, tender, buttery tart crust topped with sauteed onions, heirloom tomatoes, walnuts, and stilton.

Sophie's Mushroom Ragu

I have never used The Joy of Cooking and I don't think I've ever eaten anything someone else has made out of it. Until yesterday. And now I realize I've been missing out on something. This mushroom ragu--ragu or ragout refers to a main course stew, in case you were curious--was delicious! I'm not sure exactly what the recipe called for; Sophie--the same Sophie who recently made me that delicious lemon pasta with caviar--said she's changed it a bit over the years, but I assume she's captured the spirit of it since she did have the cookbook open to the very stained page with the recipe on it.

Chocolate Cake with Peanut Butter Buttercream~with recipe

My friend Sophie's birthday was a few days before I went to visit her so I had to make her a (belated) birthday cake. I knew I wanted to make chocolate cake (because who doesn't love chocolate birthday cake?) but I was torn between coconut buttercream (since it was such a hit with the coconut macaroons) and peanut butter buttercream. I thought the coconut and chocolate would be nice, sort of mounds bar like. But of course chocolate and peanut butter is a classic combination. I was leaning towards coconut, but I figured I'd let the birthday girl decide. I'm glad I did and I'm glad she chose peanut butter. It was delicious! The peanut butter buttercream was perfect. The taste was sweet and rich and perfectly peanutty--it reminded me of the peanut butter nougat I made in class and for my final exam. The texture was surprisingly fluffy for something made primarily of butter and peanut butter.

The buttercream recipe is:

Sophie's Famous Lemon Pasta with Caviar

Alright, maybe it's not famous. But it should be. Whenever I have dinner a my friend Sophie's house, I request this dish. Happily for me, I'm staying with her for the next three weeks, so I bet I can convince her to make it again before I leave.

This dish is actually quite simple and perhaps I should start making it for myself, but I think half the fun of it is that it's something I only get on special occasions with Sophie (of course the other half is that it's caviar on pasta!)

Eating Out

Sorry I've been offline. I've been on vacation with limited Internet access. In the spirit of being on holiday I've been eating out. A lot. At some very nice restaurants.

It's been strange being back in NYC as a tourist, but nice because I've never had an excuse to eat at Bar Boulud, Jean-Georges' Nougatine, and Cafe Fiorello over the course of only two days--lunch, lunch, dinner. (The excuse was actually my mom's birthday, but if we'd been living in the City we certainly would have had at least one of the meals at home.)

Coconut Macaroon Sandwiches

These were AMAZING! I always love coconut macaroons and they just so happen to be gluten free. But it's not Passover and Pops (who loves my "coconut do-dads") wasn't around so I didn't want to make boring old plain coconut macaroons. I happened to have some left over plain buttercream lying around and decided to make macaroon sandwiches (inspired, of course, by traditional French macarons). Martha Stewart has a recipe in her Cookies cookbook for just such a thing. I used her proportions for the macaroon "dough" which was pretty much perfect for scooping and molding once chilled. They baked up beautifully and didn't fall apart at all (a problem I sometimes have with macaroons).

Healthy Breakfast

For something a little different, I thought I'd make something that wasn't sweet. Actually I cook a reasonable amount, I just don't usually think it's blog worthy. This, however, is definitely worthy of my blog.

My mom and I are trying to eat healthier. This means that breakfast has mainly been fat free yogurt with berries and granola or oatmeal made with water (I make a mean oatmeal, but it does get old). Occasionally an egg white omelette breaks the monotony. I decided to mix things up. And about an hour later (my time management isn't great when I'm cooking...) we had oven baked home fries, sautéed mushrooms, and scallion scrambled eggs.

Individual Berry Crumbles

My mom has always loved Nigella Lawson's jumble berry crumble recipe. So from time to time I make a crumble mixture and leave it in the freezer so I can toss it on top of a ramekin of frozen berries and have dessert with almost no effort. Generally, I do this in the winter since I serve it hot out of the oven.

But then I thought about it and realized that a crumble would be the perfect use for fresh berries that were maybe getting a little sad. My cousin was coming over for dinner so I needed a gluten free dessert and my strawberries weren't fresh enough for Eton mess (the dessert I'd planned to make). What a perfect opportunity to test my theory.

Scribble Roses

A few months ago I saw a good guide on Arty McGoo's blog on how to paint scribble roses onto royal icing coated cookies. I decided I had to try it and did so with pen and paper (well actually with a finger on a drawing app on my iPad).

Anniversary Cake, con't

Various views of the finished product

Okay I lied before, I'm not just leaving you with one photo! Here's another montage:

The cake at various stages of not-done-ness

Anniversary Cake

As I mentioned, my mom and I volunteered to make my a cake for our cousin's 40th anniversary. We decided on an impressive, 4-tiered confection. You can see the baking process, as well as a generalized timeline for making a large scale cake here. In addition to that guide for making a wedding cake, I'd like to share some thoughts specific to making this cake:

The cake that inspired me

Sugar Dahlias

A finished dahlia.

Sugar paste dahlias, as it turns out are made with daisy cutters of varying size. They aren't terribly hard, but then again they are quite tedious. You have to work quickly but still carefully and relatively precisely when you are frilling the petals. You have to brush each layer with petal dust before you put them together and then touch up the whole thing at the end (unlike roses which are typically dusted at the end only). But they aren't as difficult as roses, since the petals are all attached to each other and you just have to put on layers of them.

In the process of making the outer petal layers.
Notice the parchment between the petals to hold them
in position as they dry.

How to Make a Wedding Cake

As I mentioned, I'm making a wedding-style cake for my cousin's anniversary party. Making a large, tiered, fondant-enrobed cake takes time and planning; the key to a successful large-scale project is making a schedule. At culinary school, we had to make schedules that accounted for every minute of class time. At home I don't get so granular, but I still need a general, but still relatively comprehensive schedule.  I personally prefer to devote large chunks of time to working on the cake with days off when needed, rather than working on it for small amounts every day. I also like using buttercream when it's freshly made (when I can, at least). Given those preferences, here's the schedule I worked out:

My final sketch

Sugarpaste Practice

My cousins are celebrating their 40th anniversary quite soon and my mom and I volunteered to make the cake. We want it to be really special so I'm practicing making gumpaste/sugarpaste flowers (I haven't made any since my wedding cake and final exam showpiece at school so I definitely needed practice). Right now the plan is a 4 tier white fondant covered cake with brown accents. We want a few, large, hot pink flowers for a pop of color, so my plan is to try a bunch of different flowers and decide on one type to make.

I made a ranunculus (pictured at the top of the post). It's rather like making a rose, but you don't have to frill/curl the edges so it's a bit easier. Of course you also have to put on a ton more petals so it's much more tedious. I really happy with it, especially for my first try. Unfortunately they are a little small for the cake because we want a few larger flowers not clumps of smaller ones.

Lemon Yogurt Loaf Cakes

The finished mini loaves

This quick bread is made with yogurt instead of butter. This is nice for three reasons: 1, it does reduce the fat and cholesterol in the cake (probably not a lot, but every little bit helps); 2, it make the recipe really easy to execute--no need to cream the butter or melt it and let it cool; and 3, it give the loaf a nice tang, which complemented the tart zing of the lemon. Happily, the yogurt did not make the cakes tough, which I find can happen. In fact the texture was quite nice, tender, springy, and light. They were quite lemony with a subtle tang from the yogurt (as I already mentioned). When the came out of the oven, I soaked them with a bit of lemon simple syrup, which added to the flavor and made the cakes moist and delicious.

What made these extra special was the glaze on top. It's just a simple lemon juice and powdered sugar icing/glaze and it was delicious! Tart but still sweet. It set up nicely but still melted in your mouth. Anyway, who doesn't like a good glaze?

Overall, I thought these were excellent. That said, I really love lemon loaf cakes, this is not the first recipe I've tried and it won't be the last. But I'm sure during the process of trying every recipe I can find, I'll circle around to this one a few times.

Before the glaze set

Coffee Sorbet with Walnut Sauce in a Chocolate Tuile Bowl

I made this years ago, well before I started a blog. I found the photo on my laptop today and thought I had to share it.

It was incredible! The coffee sorbet--which I had made in my new ice cream machine--was smooth (but a little icy, in a good way) and richly coffee-y. The sauce, which was from Dessert University, I think, was really good. It's surprising to have a sauce flavored with nuts, but it worked nicely. It was sweet and nutty and thick without being heavy. The tuile bowl was good, although, if I remember correctly, I made it a bit too thick. Also it wasn't quite chocolaty enough--but then again tuiles are never terribly flavorful. These flavors worked together so nicely, the walnut sauce and the coffee sorbet were delicious together; add in the mild chocolate flavor and wow that's good!

Banana Nut Bread

In case I haven't mentioned this before, I have a strong dislike for bananas. Seriously, I can't stand them--the taste, the smell, the texture, yuk! Generally I can't even eat bananas when the come in the lovely form of banana bread--and even if I can tolerate it, I don't really like it. This was an exception; I actually found it enjoyable. The rest of my family, who are normal and like bananas, were even more enthusiastic than I was--Pops ate two and a half mini loaves himself (impressive since we only kept 4)!

I think what makes this banana bread so good is that it is chock full of toasted walnuts and unsweetened coconut. This didn't mask the banana flavor, but it does make the whole flavor of the bread more complex. Usually banana bread is quite sweet and dense. This was a bit less sweet (which was nice) and a bit lighter while still being moist (which was also nice). Plus I used ripe but not over ripe bananas--not by design, just because I was making these for a specific purpose (I wanted to give two mini loaves to two people I was meeting with) and the bananas weren't over ripe yet. These really were good--so good that I may need to rethink my position on bananas.

Lemon Curd Cake

Remember the lemon chiffon cake with lemon curd filling? This was inspired by that cake. I made the same lemon curd filling (and I finally found sheet gelatin so it made life much easier). Instead of lemon chiffon cake, I made the same white cake I used for my wedding cake project. It's such a nice cake and I wanted to see how it came out when baked in cake pans rather than sheet pans (for a project I'm working in...I'll tell you about that soon). The frosting is left over cream cheese frosting from my party (it was on the cupcakes). I think the tang of the cream cheese complemented the lemon curd nicely while the sweetness of the cake balances it out nicely.

For the outside of the cake, I decided to try my hand at that lovely swirl that Baked Brooklyn does so nicely (if you don't know them, check them out). I ordered a cake turntable (finally) but it hasn't come yet so this wasn't easy. The way to get a smooth even swirl up the side and on the top is to hold the spatula nearly still, pulling it up slowly as you turn the cake smoothly on the turntable. At least I think that's how to do it...since I don't have a turntable it's really just an educated guess. As it was I did about the same thing, except I manually turned the cake stand, which is not conducive to anything being smooth and even. But that's okay, because I think it still looks really nice!

Happy Chocolate Chip Cookie Day!

From left to right: traditional chocolate chip,
peanut butter chocolate chip,
chocolate-chocolate chip,
 oatmeal chocolate chip

Apparently today is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. Thank goodness I had some balls of frozen chocolate, chocolate chip cookie dough in freezer! So celebrate this wonderful holiday by eating a chocolate chip cookie and perhaps remember to freeze some scoops of cookie dough so that you can always have hot cookies.

Belated Birthday Desserts

In addition to the two cakes, I made quite a few desserts for my party:

Toasted coconut brownies

Mini Brooklyn blackout cupcakes with cream cheese frosting

Chocolate, chocolate chip cookies

The brownies were delicious with desiccated coconut giving them a lovely texture. The Brooklyn blackout cupcakes were delicious as usual and the zing of the cream cheese frosting was complemented the deep, dark chocolate cake nicely.

The cookies were surprisingly good. I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised, the recipe was from Nigella Lawson and she really is a domestic goddess, but I love the chocolate chocolate chip cookies from Death by Chocolate. These might actually be better than the latter. The taste was a little sweeter (which I'm not sure is better or worse...it's just different). But the texture was perfect: a little crisp around the edges but still soft and nearly gooey on the inside (without being under baked).

Milk chocolate caramels with Maldon sea salt

Chocolate, peanut butter and oatmeal candies

The caramels and the candies (which are technically no bake cookies, but I think they are more like candies) were both gluten free (as is typical for candies) and were delicious. In fact, the caramels were perfect, which made me really happy because the last time I tried making them they came out yummy but the texture was all wrong and they didn't hold their shape. The cookies/candies, which came out a little crumbly and difficult to shape, ended up richly peanutty and quite sweet with a hint of chocolate and a nice texture from the oats.

Because there were two excellent chocolate cakes, the cupcakes, cookies and brownies didn't get much attention but we sent them home with people as favors and heard good things about them after. Interestingly the candies were popular even with the cakes as everyone's focus. I suppose the small size and the complete lack of similarity to cake made everyone reach for them. Both were well received but the caramels were definitely the star (well the German chocolate cake was the star, but the caramels were the non-cake star). All in all, everything was yummy and there were plenty of leftovers to enjoy after we weren't so stuffed from the amazing food!